Alumni Relations

Civil Rights

Wallace Hall: housemother called a meeting and asked us to report (underscore), not encourage, Kofi Annan dating a white resident. (I was incensed enough to write my sister, who recently found my letter confirming that memory.)

I read the comment under civil rights by Elizabeth Turner Platt, and I was the person who was a good friend of Kofi Annan. My landlady, just before a vacation, asked me to bring back a note from my parents saying it was OK for me to go out with a person of color (not her term). I stifled a response along the lines of would she like me to bring it back pinned to my jacket. I thought my parents would be amused, but I was appalled when they said they always tried to bring us up not to be prejudiced, but they never expected us to practice it!

We were on campus during the early years of the civil rights movement. I shared with my parents that we had picketed the theater downtown that was part of a chain that had segregated theaters in the South. My father was very concerned that, as a result of this participation, the FBI would create a "file" on me as a subversive person. Seems strange now, but those were different times.